Suffering in Silence
by FromTheInsideOut2
Summary: The problem with suffering is that we want to be alone and in those moments of solitude we suffer the most.


Sometimes life can be a little too difficult.

It's not like she doesn't know this already. Her mother has been gone for 15 years at this point. Life can also be busy. With all the guys becoming more involved with business matters she has seen them less and less as the years go by.

Naturally, she's a homebody by heart and doesn't mind the quiet. But something has been eating away at her heart. Sure, she has busied herself with her course load studies and the part-time job she picked up at the coffee shop but the moments where she is truly by herself are consumed with a haze of anxiety and loneliness.

At first, it was pinpricks of realizations that she was longing for their comfort. Now, they come in sweeping debilitating waves that force her to the darkest corners of her mind. Her rational mind knows that if she were to reach out that they would come running but her mind is filled with too many irrational thoughts to make herself do the exact thing she should do.

It was easier this way.

She guilts herself into solitude most days and others she wills herself to go out just to be surrounded by other people hoping that it was enough to soothe the aches. Her current classmates will invite her out to parties and events but just showing up takes so much mental preparation that by the time she arrives she is already exhausted by the hurdles she had to jump through to convince herself to leave the house. It is not like she dislikes her peers, they are nice, but everyone is so consumed with academic perfection that they are blind to those struggling around them. But she can see. She has spent enough time watching them that the cracks of their humanity are rupturing under the societal pressure called excellence. Their masks slipping fractions when they think no one is looking. But still, altogether they march forward attending classes, working jobs, and drowning themselves.

Life does not stop or slow when tragedy happens.

Judging by how low the sun is during the day when she leaves her shift at the coffee shop it must be closer to the end of the year. She gave up looking at a calendar about a month after it happened. From that time she estimates that it has been about nine months total since the accident and about three months since they stopped reaching out to her.

Society is not set up to mourn the loss of life. To exist, costs money. Jobs will not allow indeterminate leave time to allow the soul to find a foothold. Life forces you to move forward and to keep pace but the heart seeks all forms of existing in a reality that no longer of this world.

Instead of living in the moment, your brain is on a loop of never-ending fleeting moments spent with the ones that mean the most. The problem with memories is that they are skewed by time. Those that used to be so clear are now marred with unsatisfactory fragments of sorrow. The sound of his laughter has been muted by anguish and screams. The angular features of his face have been softened by the constant flow of her tears. His once lively silhouette that used to command a room is now shrouded in a vale of darkness. The quiet moments they spent together whispering sweet nothings are now static-filled white noise lost within the numbness of her soul.

She misses him.

God, she misses him.

Constantly.

She feels her mind reach out to him grasping into the void hoping that life would grant her one last moment.

A moment she could savor. A moment, unchanged by time and space to hold as a keepsake for the rest of eternity.

To see his smile spread across his face or to feel his warm breath dance across her skin. But more than anything she wishes for, out of all of his complexities that make the sum of him, she wishes for some form of reassurance that he is ok and that she too is going to eventually be ok. She can see clear as day.

He would stand there looking down at her, giving her his best smirk, holding her hand a little bit too tight while wiping the tears streaming down her face.

"You think too much."

What she wouldn't give to have that time. She would desperately memorize every detail. She would hold him so tight it would hurt. Every part of him that touched her, she would try to imprint the sensation to her heart. Her body would become a walking memorial. Not that she was even half of the person she used to be. She is just a shell of a person without him, her sickly complexion and dark circles under her eyes were a testament to that.

Like her mother, his picture sat atop the memorial in the living room. Maybe losing her mother at such a young age was a blessing, in some regards. Cooping with loss at a young age seemed easier. There were fewer memories to cling too. Most of them are happy moments, those set aside by life as a peace offering for taking a loved one while she was so young.

Now, loss seems unbearable. The moments that should bring peace bring bitterness. Existing was effortless but now it takes every ounce of motivation to find the courage to breathe.

In rare moments, she hates him. She hates all the things that he ever did. She hates how he forced himself into her life. He caused her to care deeply for those around her. Now that care was the burden that she carries with her. She hates that he's gone. She hates that she had ever met him. She hates how much she still loves him. It was his parting gift, though she was sure, he would never understand how much he had changed her in such a short time.

Maybe one day she would feel ok. Maybe one day she would find joy in her studies. Maybe one day she would wake up and miss him a little less. Maybe one day.

But today she will wake up clutching his already tear-stained suit jacket.

Today she will continue to mourn the loss like she did that day.

Today she will put on the mask.

Today she will find the courage to walk out into the light and breathe.


End file.
